May, 2007

We saw the brilliance of the Danish energy policy on Tuesday in the farm fields of Germany as we drove south from Berlin headed for the world’s first coal fired plant that may sequester CO2. Those fields were sprouting a great crop of 250 foot tall Vestas wind turbines slowly spinning in a very light wind. It is funny how a decision by the Danish parliament ended up planting wind turbines in German fields. I will bet the German framers make more per acre on their crop of turbines than on their picturesque crops of oats and rye.

While in Copenhagen this past weekend, I enjoyed seeing smiling Danes out on a weekend stroll past the Little Mermaid, while I enjoyed the vista of the line of 250 foot tall wind turbines spinning in the harbor. Later in the day, the Danes who were briefing our congressional delegation mentioned that according to several studies, the Danish people are the happiest on earth. Maybe it is because of their advanced energy policy. Actually, it is more likely to be because of their great cheese and kippered herring, but their forward thinking energy policy hasn’t hurt them either.

Good things in the world of clean energy often can happen by pure accident. As a perfect example, I read yesterday about Engineering Professor Jerry Woodall of Purdue who had a little surprise awhile back when he washing some lab equipment and stumbled on a reaction that could just possibly make fuel cells workable.

It seems that while Professor Woodall was doing his routine lab cleaning, he inadvertently mixed water, aluminum, and gallium together and discovered what you get is hydrogen gas, a gas that literally went ‘poof” right in his face. It seems he had chanced upon the discovery that the addition of gallium to hydrogen and water allows the well known reaction of water and aluminum to be sustained in producing hydrogen – thus the little explosion in his face.

This week has seen an avalanche of clean energy in the House. Tuesday, the Prime Minister of Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt, appeared before our global warming committee and briefed us on the amazing work his country has done in developing a clean energy economy. He showed what an industrialized country can do with a bit of leadership. His first bit of good news was that Sweden has reduced its CO2 emissions by 7% since 1990 while its economy has grown. So much for the doomsayers’ prediction that moving on energy will wreck an economy.